Simultaneous estimation of thermophysical properties and convective boundary conditions of a sample room in Tehran using inverse analysis

In this paper, the thermophysical properties and convective heat transfer coefficients of a sample room in Tehran have been estimated separately and simultaneously in an inverse heating-cooling calculation problem. So at first the thermal modeling of the room has been performed as a direct problem. In the direct problem, it is assumed that the thermophysical properties and boundary conditions are known. The governing equations for this problem are transient heat conduction equations in the walls with the combined convection and radiation boundary conditions and the consideration of radiation among the room internal walls’ surface, and also bulk model for energy conservation in the room. To solve numerically these equations, finite volume method has been employed. In addition, to discretize the equation of bulk model and sensitivity coefficients, a backward finite difference method has been used. Then, the parameter estimation technique based on conjugate gradient method has been used for the estimation of the unknown parameters including conductive heat transfer coefficient, volumetric heat capacity, and internal and external convective heat transfer coefficients by with/without noise in measured values. The results show that separate and simultaneous estimations of the parameters that affect the building energy and thermal load of the room are available using the parameter version of conjugate gradient method.